Postcards from the Desert ( Danger Days: Killjoys verse)
by reading-is-in
Summary: A man appears in the desert. Backstory to events depicted in the videos for Na Na Na and Sing by My Chemical Romance.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing in, of, or vaguely related to the Killjoys universe. This not-for-profit fanfic is written purely for the entertainment of myself and others.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

2017\. Zone Four.

Sheet-white sand goes on forever and ever.

In the City, those of them who'd dared to speak of it had had some vague romantic notions about the desert, the junk-punk civilizations of heroes and revolutionaries. In the desert there would be color again. In the desert there was life. Ray is twelve or fourteen miles south of anywhere in the hottest part of the year, and now there is only white and bleached sky and the creeping realization he's dying out here. This. Fuck. This wasn't how it was meant to happen. Find a gang, that was the first thing they'd told him. Safety in numbers is everything in the desert. Hook up with a crew at the first opportunity. They might not accept you at first but at least you'll have some kind of protection. That was sensible as far as it went, but it turns out the first 'crew' Ray guessed he had something to barter with turned out to be not so much for the solidarity, and having been held up at gunpoint for everything he'd brought, he was out here on his own again. Minus water. Tent. Pocket knife. It wasn't like he'd smuggled a treasure trove out of Battery City. Either his years in the sterile labs and corridors of BL/Ind had rendered Ray a poor, poor judge of character, or he just had EASY TARGET written all over him.

Thirst had started in the back of his throat and crept up and downwards, his tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of his mouth and the headache had progressed so that he couldn't see so well anymore. The sand was moving. It seemed to be getting dark, but that couldn't be, because it was still morning, wasn't it? The heat was sullen, flattening, sun edging inexorably to the hottest part of the day and the only thing to do was find shade, which meant walking. Keep. Walking. Ray felt kind of sick. Everything seemed to be getting heavier. Or maybe that was just his body and blood. That didn't make sense though, because he was boiling, and surely when you were literally boiling, you should evaporate?

Could blood boil inside your body?

The sand flats were swaying now. Even the sky was moving. A vision of the rebel cities would have been nice, even if it was just a hallucination. Nice way to go out, in any case. Wait no. He wasn't supposed to be thinking that, he was supposed to stay positive-

-the ground lurched abruptly. It was kind of rude.

Lights out.

"...k dangerous to you?"

"...ke that. Korse probably didn't look dangerous when..."

"...stranger, then I don't even know when the point of all this is."

"...ourselves first... t a charity, Poison!"

"..."

The Afterlife was weird.

Ray comes to with the sensation of being watched. He was an impression of large eyes and pale skin. Illegally colored hair. The watcher sits forward eagerly and opens his mouth. Ray passes out again.

A ceiling. There are wires hanging loose and a lot of dust. A few of the beams are hanging loose. He is lying on something hard and cool.

It's cool and dark in here.

"Just so you know, I have a fully charged gun on my belt and anything you were packing is long gone. We searched you." The voice is calm and matter of fact, coming from the shadows in a corner. It's not particularly loud but still has the rough effect of a pneumatic drill applied to the space between Ray's eyebrows. He grits his teeth and makes a sound that must betray the degree of pain he's in, because the voice says, maybe a little mollified, "Water on your right."

It takes Ray an inordinately long time to figure out which one right is. He finally gets it when his fingers twitch with the memory of a guitar. That was – old. He reaches across and gropes blindly at something cold and plastic which promptly slips out of his fingers.

"Oh for – Jesus. Here." The voice is annoyed, but the hand that raises his head is almost gentle, and then water touches his lips and he can't think about anything but swallowing as fast as possible: "Hey slow down or you'll puke again!" Again? "Ugh, I am so not cut out for this Florence Nightingale crap." Water has an amazing effect. Ray still feels like – well, utter shit, but now shit with the desire and ability to sit up and grab the bottle and drink as much as he can as fast as possible.

"HEY! WHAT DID I JUST SAY, DUMBASS?!"

Ray lowers the water bottle. He does feel kind of sick still, but now he's distracted by the clear sight of his captor/guardian, and then he just starts laughing, because the thing is, this guy is tiny, and Ray's seriously not doubting his ability to kill him seventeen ways from across the room or whatever but somehow that just makes it funnier, he's like literally a pixie, all big eyes and small face and he probably comes up to Ray's freaking belt buckle or something –

"Okay, you're crazy," says the guy, throwing his (tiny!) hands up. "That's just great. Hey Poison, he's fucking crazy, in case you were wondering! I'm not dealing with this!" This last is yelled to someone presumably in an adjoining room, or outside. There is no reply.

"I'm not-" Ray wants to deny it but he's not entirely sure he can do so honestly, and in any case talking makes him cough. The guy just glares at him, arms folded across his chest. Now that Ray's eyes are adjusting to the darkness he can make out the brightly colored motorbike leathers, the longish hair. Belt buckle was a slight exaggeration, but the dude is very short and small. And kind of - well, pretty, a fact he's done his level best to efface with a variety of punkish tattoos and piercings.

"So what were you doing out there?" the guy asks when Ray's finished coughing. "You had like – nothing. No water. That's kind of suicidally stupid."

"I got robbed," Ray confesses.

"Huh. Well, it's a good thing for you Poison's kind of a bleeding heart. I figured you were a trap. Or a spy. I'm still not entirely convinced, by the way, though I guess the fact you nearly died and nothing happened means you can't be a very valuable spy."

"I – nearly died?"

"Sure. From dehydration and exposure. We gave you some water but you puked it back and I was like, this guy's a goner, but Poison was like, no, we have to try for good of humanity or some shit, and well, we had space on a bike. So here we are I guess. "

"...Oh." Nearly having died would explain the encompassing feeling of being something squashed on a windscreen, as well as the burned-soreness he was starting to register in pretty much every inch of his skin.

"So you crew kicked you out? Pick a fight with the leader? Or are you just useless or something?"

"No crew." Ray swallowed and lay back on the mattress. The ceiling blurred a bit. "I just got out."

Pause.

"Out of what?"

"Uh – the City."

"You left Battery City. Voluntarily. And alone." It's a statement of scepticism, not a question, and Ray is annoyed.

"We're not all – it's not all the same in there. Some people are awake."

"Yeah alright," says the guy after a long pause. "Whatever you say. So. I have shit to do. There's more water under the bunk and a bathroom –kind of – that way. And no weapons or communications equipment, so don't bother looking. Poison will want to talk to you later."

He leaves and locks the door.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

The next time Ray wakes up he feels a lot better. He feels like getting up and moving and – like he really needs that bathroom now. He decides that must be a good thing – his body wouldn't be wasting water if he were dying of dehydration, right?

It turns out that 'bathroom' was a generous term – there's an old fashioned china latrine with a chain and one of those tiny sinks wedged into a corner. The water is brackish and muddy, but he splashes some on his face and anyway and wishes briefly for a razor. He determines to think only about the present moment. If he looks back, he'll get lost there, and thinking about the chain of events that have brought him here makes him feel crazy and helpless and out of control. He can't afford that. It's enough to deal with the debt of gratitude settling heavily on his shoulders.

He goes back to the storeroom with the pallet bed, and tries the door. It's still locked, so he knocks it and calls,

"Hello?"

No answer. He coughs and tries louder but still nothing - his pulse picks up and he knows harder, adrenalin rapidly building to a minor freakout with alarming speed, when the door swings suddenly open. He's face to face with wide hazel eyes in a cherubic face, the bright-dyed hair he remembers from his half-dream.

"Oh!" exclaims his rescuer: "Were you locked in?" His voice is melodic and he speaks rapidly: "I'm so sorry. Ghoul means well, he's just kind of over-cautious sometimes, but you'll love him once you get to know him. Anyway you look a lot better. Are you feeling better?"

"Uh..." Ray clears his throat again. "Yeah. Yeah I am. Thanks."

"Come and sit down though." The redhead practically ushers him out of the doorway, and into the front parlour of an old-style American diner. He gestures for Ray to sit in one of the dark red booths and slides a warm can of coke across the table to him. "Sorry it's diet. I'm sure you could use the sugar and all, but my brother kind of has an addiction."

"No this – this is great. Thanks." Ray's still staring around, kind of overcome, and his brain tries to catalogue the other people in the room. There's a woman with red lips and black hair wearing a US army tee as a dress with a leather belt, and a skinny guy in a yellow jacket absorbed in an e-reader. A child with frizzy hair and round bright eyes was building a Lego city under a table. All of these people are alive, in living colour. His eyes are drawn back to the girl. She's too old, but with that hair he can almost imagine her how ishe/i would look, maybe in a few years –

\- Enough.

"Thanks for everything," he elaborates, as the redhead slides into the booth opposite. "I guess you saved my life."

Redhead's eyes widen even further, apparent grief and compassion. Ray is slightly concerned he's about to touch his hand.

"What were you doing out there alone?" he asks. "Wait – I mean – you don't have to talk about it. But if you iwant/i to talk about it that's fine too. I'm Party Poison by the way."

"You're Party Poison?"

"Our respected leader," says the skinny guy without taking his eyes of his e-reader. It is utterly impossible to tell if he's being sarcastic.

"'It's not like that," Redhead – Poison – assures Ray.

"It kind of is," says the woman.

"But we all make decisions together and stuff. This is a democracy."

"I'm Ray," Ray says.

"Oh – dude," Poison winces. "You don't have to tell us your real name yet."

"Um, – I don't have any other name."

That gets skinny guy's attention and he looks up: "Well what did your crew call you?" Ray is struck by the odd resemblance to Poison: odd because hard to pin to particular features, they don't have the same eyes or nose or jaw, yet they are obviously related. He guesses this must be the brother.

"I wasn't in a crew," Ray admits. "I just left Battery City like – I'm not sure how many days ago." There's a beat of silence, and he recalls the short guy's wariness: "I'm not drugged," he says quickly. "Or – hardly, if I am. I've been cutting down on the pills for months, went cold turkey before I got out, there can hardly be anything left in my system." He spread his hands.

"We believe you," says Poison. "It's just – well – how did you get out? We don't see that sort of thing everyday, you know."

"I had help. There's a sort of a, a network," he draws it in the air, sketchy connection of undefined points: "but I don't know that much about it. I only met with one person face to face. And she was wearing a mask. People have to protect themselves, you know we may not all be revolutionaries but we're not all good little BL/Ind citizens either." He stops. Poison looks at the skinny guy and they hold a kind of conversation through the medium of eyebrows.

"Okay," says Poison at length. "Well, that's Kobra Kid. He's my little brother. Over there is Fuck Machine, and we call the motorbaby Grace."

"We're Killjoys," says the little girl. She's entirely unexcited by the profanity. "We fight dracs and one time Party and Ghoul got the kids out of a laboratory but I wasn't allowed to come. I helped a lot though. iAnd/i I can shoot. But I'm not allowed my own gun till I'm ten."

"I said we would italk about it/i when you were ten, Gracie," the woman says.

"How long is that?"

"You can figure it out. Do a take-away."

Ray tears his eyes away as Grace holds up ten fingers, and assiduously starts counting down.

"Wait," he says. "Did she says Killjoys?"

"Our reputation precedes us," says Kobra.

"It – I'll say!" Ray exclaims. His mind is spinning. Killjoys. Fuck. If there was one crew whose name was whispered amongst the discontents with reverence – and a side of fear – it was the Killjoys. Known for the ruthless massacre of Dracs and Crows as much for the liberation of political prisoners and experimental subjects, Ray had just expected them to be – scarier. Their leader ought to be bald and grim, maybe an eyepatch or a robotic hand or something. Right now Poison looks more like an earnest schoolkid than a ruthless resistance leader. "You guys are legendary."

"Oh I'd dispute that," says Poison thoughtfully. "I don't think we've been around long enough to call ilegendary/i, that implies-..."

"So what did you do? In the city?" Fuck Machine asks Ray. "Can you fight? Build? Any medical knowledge?"

"I was a data analyst," Ray admits. "And I know a bit about cars and bikes. But –"

"But?" Kobra looks at him. Ray doesn't know why he's saying this already, but he can't the stupid feeling that this must be ifate/i or something, that he's found ithis/i crew,with this particular dream...

"Once," he says quickly, "Before the Helium wars. I was a musician. I mean, I wasn't igood/i, I was only sixteen so I didn't have time to be igood/i exactly, but that was what I wanted."

Poison and Kobra look at eachother, and apparently conduct a conversation through the medium of their eyebrows. Then Poison turns back to Ray. He's smiling.

TBC


End file.
